Northern Independence Party

[killer b]

It's sadly inevitable that there will be wrong 'uns getting involved. Question is, as a Party, will they deal with it?

well, the twitter thread seems to show it not being dealt with, and some pretty dodgy stuff from the dude in charge (mind, his academic area is Syria, and you'd imagine they'd have dug up something more significant if he was properly dodgy on that...).

Any nascent left-wing political movement needs to have a strategy for dealing with the cranks who'll end up circling, as well as the inevitable attacks along these lines from the centrists. This stuff, and the recent boosting of cranks like Rachel Swindon does not fill me with confidence it's going to be done right here...

 

[kebabking]

I'm not sure how the party deals with the cranks when the cranks are the party leadership...

I follow them, I'm interested in seeing how they develop, and what their penetration of previous voting behaviour is like, but the unpleasant truth for the left is that this kind of shit is deeply ingrained and pretty widespread within the Left-of-Labour, and that anything that emerges from within that sphere is going to contain a good slice of this poison.

 

[RedRedRose]

Free whippets on the NHS?
A tax on people not wearing flat caps.
MDMA to be made legal but only if taken by oral lipid absorption.

I flagged your post for racism.

 

[Serge Forward]

Regionalism, surely?

 

[chilango]

well, the twitter thread seems to show it not being dealt with, and some pretty dodgy stuff from the dude in charge (mind, his academic area is Syria, and you'd imagine they'd have dug up something more significant if he was properly dodgy on that...).

Any nascent left-wing political movement needs to have a strategy for dealing with the cranks who'll end up circling, as well as the inevitable attacks along these lines from the centrists. This stuff, and the recent boosting of cranks like Rachel Swindon does not fill me with confidence it's going to be done right here...

Yeah. Few parties (big or small) seem to have figured this out yet.

 

[RedRedRose]

Regionalism, surely?

 

[A380]

I flagged your post for racism.

I’m from the East of England. Racism is part of our culture.

 

[Serge Forward]

You know, I have the impression that the Northern Independence Party started off as a bit of a laff between mates, that just happened to catch the public's (at least some of the public) imagination. The whole whippet logo screams piss take. I expect the national anthem would have been Pigeons In Flight by John Shuttleworth/Graham Fellows, if it hadn't started to get serious.

 

[kebabking]

I’m from the East of England. Racism is part of our culture.

And rightly so, you bunch of six-fingered, banjo playing sister-shaggers...

Even the French can feel superior to you lot.

 

[A380]

And rightly so, you bunch of six-fingered, banjo playing sister-shaggers...

Even the French can feel superior to you lot.

I don’t play the banjo.

 

[mauvais]

You know, I have the impression that the Northern Independence Party started off as a bit of a laff between mates, that just happened to catch the public's (at least some of the public) imagination. The whole whippet logo screams piss take. I expect the national anthem would have been Pigeons In Flight by John Shuttleworth/Graham Fellows, if it hadn't started to get serious.

Is this a problem? The two alternative approaches seem to be either (a) a load of 'professionals' with a load of money a la Changdependence or whatever they were, or (b) a load of po-faced hardcore political types a la TUSC who never capture anyone's imagination.

 

[Pickman's model]

You know, I have the impression that the Northern Independence Party started off as a bit of a laff between mates, that just happened to catch the public's (at least some of the public) imagination. The whole whippet logo screams piss take. I expect the national anthem would have been Pigeons In Flight by John Shuttleworth/Graham Fellows, if it hadn't started to get serious.

surprised none of them have yet declared themselves a lineal descendant of uhtred of bebbanburg or eric bloodaxe

 

[Serge Forward]

Is this a problem? The two alternative approaches seem to be either (a) a load of 'professionals' with a load of money a la Changdependence or whatever they were, or (b) a load of po-faced hardcore political types a la TUSC who never capture anyone's imagination.

Not if pigeons in flight is the anthem.

 

[ska invita]

Yeah. Few parties (big or small) seem to have figured this out yet.

as i said upthread: UKIP is the model, and they're Loons to the last. They managed to shrug it all off. Im not suggest NIP ignore it, but on their level UKIP is more the model than Labour. Tories shrug it off too tbh.

 

[Pickman's model]

You know, I have the impression that the Northern Independence Party started off as a bit of a laff between mates, that just happened to catch the public's (at least some of the public) imagination. The whole whippet logo screams piss take. I expect the national anthem would have been Pigeons In Flight by John Shuttleworth/Graham Fellows, if it hadn't started to get serious.

or

 

[mauvais]

well, this is disappointing (the detail seems to rely on context-free receipts from some private forum, but whatever the context some of it doesn't look great)

This stuff, I haven't decided how much I want to excuse it all, but what are reasonable expectations?

That thread is a maybe legitimate complaint about Syria mixed in with some hardcore grudge stuff. Randomly leaking bits of their Slack is extremely poor form and that guy can get fucked for that. Randomly leaking bits of my work Slack would probably make me look bad.

 

[killer b]

This stuff, I haven't decided how much I want to excuse it all, but what are reasonable expectations?

That thread is a maybe legitimate complaint about Syria mixed in with some hardcore grudge stuff. Randomly leaking bits of their Slack is extremely poor form and that guy can get fucked for that. Randomly leaking bits of my work Slack would probably make me look bad.

I'm not totally sure what our reasonable expectations should be tbh - clearly in order to achieve anything like the broad support you'd need to actually win elections there needs to be some... tolerance of a diversity of opinions. In years gone by it would have been easier to tolerate some of the more cranky cranks because they were just saying those thing in the pub and everyone would roll their eyes and change the subject, whereas now everything everyone involved has ever said politically is stored on seachable databases for hostile people to check and screenshot. I don't know what the answer is to this.

But I suppose if one of the key angles you're taking in your very first test at the polls is a rival pols support for a tyrannical middle east regime, it's probably wise to make sure you're pretty clean on tyrannical middle east regimes yourself.

 

[lazythursday]

I don't think they can win re cranky views of (some) members. Far too small and lacking resources to properly police the membership and have a fair disciplinary process. Whatever they do they will be accused of harbouring anti-semites anyway (and perhaps the more they do to investigate/discipline, the more they will be hounded to do). They should just focus on a few core policies, avoid international issues as much as possible and brazen it out ("we are not responsible for what an individual member might post on social media. That does not represent the view of the party"). Concentrate on properly vetting candidates. I think the public are weary of the endless battles about social media posts anyway, just try to side step it. I think that's the only realistic option for a new party finding its feet.

Edit - obviously I'm not saying they should ignore, say, holocaust denial. But don't get sucked down a rabbit hole of policing speech.

 

[killer b]

as i said upthread: UKIP is the model, and they're Loons to the last. They managed to shrug it all off. Im not suggest NIP ignore it, but on their level UKIP is more the model than Labour. Tories shrug it off too tbh.

Tories and UKIP are able to shrug this kind of stuff off much easier for a few reasons - crankery becomes problematic when it finds itself supporting or advocating for bigotry & tyranny, and because their supporters and activists for the most part either don't care about these things or are themselves active supporters and advocates of bigotry & tyranny, it doesn't stick.

The left are supposed to be opponents of bigotry and tyranny, so when a crank is exposed on our side, there's a two-fold problem: one, it causes conflict within the left, between those who support and those who oppose the crankery, and two it allows those attacking to level further accusations of hypocrisy against us. Plus they own the media, so they decide when to stop.

 

[Wilf]

I haven't got time to actually read anything by Proudfoot, but the abstracts I've just looked at suggests he's anything but an Assadist, though he seems to be interested in the mixture of narratives making up the Syrian opposition. But regardless of his precise position you'd expect him to avoid touch Maher Nassour with a 10 foot bargepole. Very odd.

 

[Wilf]

I don't think they can win re cranky views of (some) members. Far too small and lacking resources to properly police the membership and have a fair disciplinary process. Whatever they do they will be accused of harbouring anti-semites anyway (and perhaps the more they do to investigate/discipline, the more they will be hounded to do). They should just focus on a few core policies, avoid international issues as much as possible and brazen it out ("we are not responsible for what an individual member might post on social media. That does not represent the view of the party"). Concentrate on properly vetting candidates. I think the public are weary of the endless battles about social media posts anyway, just try to side step it. I think that's the only realistic option for a new party finding its feet.

Edit - obviously I'm not saying they should ignore, say, holocaust denial. But don't get sucked down a rabbit hole of policing speech.

Yeah, but Syria is number one on the list Proudfoot's expertise/spidey senses/red flags etc.

 

[killer b]

It seems ridiculous that a british regionalist party should need to have a position on civil wars half a world away, but considering where the NIP core activist support is coming from, and how fruitful attacks on these terms have been over recent years, it's where we are. I'm a little surprised more thought doesn't seem to have gone into this tbh (although, the timeline of the details in the twitter thread I posted isn't very clear - it may all have happened in the early shitpost months of the party, before there was really any expectations it would go beyond that. In the end it still might not, mind)

 

[Wilf]

The NIP was pretty much one man and his dog when all this was going on (can't access the tweets now, so I presume it was before the launch). At that point it wasn't so much a party having a dodgy spokespersons, it was a question of Proudfoot having dodgy mates. Fwiw, that's every bit as bad.

 

[killer b]

The NIP was pretty much one man and his dog when all this was going on (can't access the tweets now, so I presume it was before the launch). At that point it wasn't so much a party having a dodgy spokespersons, it was a question of Proudfoot having dodgy mates. Fwiw, that's every bit as bad.

It's mostly private messages rather than open tweets the guy has screenshotted.

That said, I dunno how obvious the dodginess of Maher Nasour would have been or how hard this guy had to dig through his tweets to find bad things. It's easy to present some awful things people have said and say it was clear this person was a wrong'un - the reality is not often so clearcut.

 

[Wilf]

It's mostly private messages rather than open tweets the guy has screenshotted.

That said, I dunno how obvious the dodginess of Maher Nasour would have been or how hard this guy had to dig through his tweets to find bad things. It's easy to present some awful things people have said and say it was clear this person was a wrong'un - the reality is not often so clearcut.

True and ultimately I'm not that fussed. Have my doubts that the NIP will get anywhere, even if they'd probably get my vote in some theoretical PR election. The only point I'd make is that Proudfoot should be highly qualified when it comes to spotting Assadist cranks. Maybe he's new to the ways of Twitter, though I doubt it given his prior political and academic life.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

The NIP was pretty much one man and his dog

hence the whippet?

although i am slightly concerned that the party may be seen as canine-centric and may not appeal to the feline voter...

 

[Knotted]

I've come to the conclusion that kicking out the cranks (eg. out of the Labour Party) was a bit short sighted. There's now a pool of them who are going to stink up any other project. It would be good if they were just a Labour Party problem.

 

[The39thStep]

40000 followers. Not sure what the conversion rate would be into activists on the ground. Hartlepool will obviously be the immediate priority for them, they'll need to think carefully about the council elections. However, if they could harness a fraction of that into local community activity or target some key areas for community activity, linking up with existing self help groups they could possibly make a transition from social media to real political intervention.

 

[lazythursday]

40000 followers. Not sure what the conversion rate would be into activists on the ground. Hartlepool will obviously be the immediate priority for them, they'll need to think carefully about the council elections. However, if they could harness a fraction of that into local community activity or target some key areas for community activity, linking up with existing self help groups they could possibly make a transition from social media to real political intervention.

Many of that 40,000 followers won't necessarily be supporters of course. They hit 1,000 signed up paying-subs members yesterday. I guess much will depend about where they have concentrations of members rather than thinly dispersed.

 

[The39thStep]

Many of that 40,000 followers won't necessarily be supporters of course. They hit 1,000 signed up paying-subs members yesterday. I guess much will depend about where they have concentrations of members rather than thinly dispersed.

Yes some won't but what would be the point of tens of thousands signing up to follow if they weren't in some way supporters?